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\",\"name\":\"dd9e1c41-acac-4af5-bd4b-48ac8ccb2e80\"},{\"type\":\"HEADING_3\",\"value\":\"In the construction of every Pinkerton Crime Index, years of national crime data are collected and analyzed to help form the basis of our risk scores. This granular and long-term data helps us understand the trajectory of crime offenses and crime trends across seasons and regions. These are significant in helping Pinkerton determine accurate crime percentile scores and in projecting crime trends into the present and near future.
\",\"name\":\"8ac51f5d-b5bf-462a-90d8-1a1fa5336d1f\"},{\"type\":\"PARAGRAPH\",\"value\":\"An important element of data analysis and algorithmic correction that goes into every Pinkerton Crime Index is the measure of underreporting associated with major index crime offenses. Every country’s criminal justice system features distinct offense definitions and varying ways of publishing official crime data, this extends to the resources estimating how many offenses are not officially reported to the police.
\",\"name\":\"8e1d0baa-d5b4-4220-b8fa-ed3761650de9\"},{\"type\":\"PARAGRAPH\",\"value\":\"This missing share of offenses means that understanding crime solely from police/government reportage creates misrepresentations of risk. In preparing a new PCI, Pinkerton’s data scientists modify offense-based risk with supplemental information to quantify how individual offense types are typically underreported. While an offense like homicide is minimally underreported in most countries, sexual assault is a vastly underreported offense.
\",\"name\":\"0e9f288c-7eae-4267-a7a1-e9149bb33d0d\"},{\"type\":\"PARAGRAPH\",\"value\":\"In the case of building the Spain PCI, recent major changes in how the law understands sexual assault produced changes both in how these crimes are recorded and prosecuted, as well as changes in the rates of underreporting.
\",\"name\":\"d50870d3-9962-46ad-ac27-a8c9d6588cd8\"},{\"type\":\"PARAGRAPH\",\"value\":\"Spain’s Ley del solo si es si, which translates to Only yes is yes law, was passed in 2022. It institutes a consent-based law, replacing a coercion-based law, meaning that the legal definition of rape no longer relies on violence or intimidation, but instead on the absence of consent. These legal definitional changes eliminated the offense of sexual abuse and merged it with sexual assault.
\",\"name\":\"77506c75-f7b3-40af-a872-a02467bdf68e\"},{\"type\":\"PARAGRAPH\",\"value\":\"This change was a response to widespread national protests associated with the La Manada rape case, or the Wolfpack case, in Pamplona. In 2016, an 18-year-old woman was assaulted by five men. The case drew intense scrutiny to extant definitions of rape under Spanish law and sparked nationwide protests when the accused were initially convicted of lesser crimes. These legal definitional changes were accompanied by a broad public awareness campaign including a national hotline — 016 — to facilitate reporting of all crimes against sexual freedom, domestic or gender-based violence, sexual trafficking, and sexual abuse of minors.
\",\"name\":\"442192d5-2c3a-4e04-a654-6510db2b6986\"},{\"type\":\"PARAGRAPH\",\"value\":\"The plot below shows official total reported sexual assaults and rape offenses in Spain from 2010 to 2024.
\",\"name\":\"b6b319dc-ca1c-4733-9396-eeebd33eeb33\"},{\"type\":\"WIDGET\",\"value\":{\"media\":\"/media/screenshot-2026-08-24-055954.png\",\"alt_text\":\"Reported Rapes Per Year\",\"caption\":\"\"},\"name\":\"migration_media\"},{\"type\":\"PARAGRAPH\",\"value\":\"This plot depicts official data before adjustments for underreporting and other adjustments. While at face value, the above plot shows a surge in reported sexual violence nationwide, it belies more complexity. It reflects an increase in sexual violence reported to the authorities. Some of the offenses reported include incidents that occurred in the past but were reported in later years — these offenses are statistically recorded in the year of reporting.
\",\"name\":\"6ba4a3fa-3d29-46d4-a4c5-5c217f766328\"},{\"type\":\"PARAGRAPH\",\"value\":\"Spain’s new law also broadens the scope of offenses that are legally defined as rape, meaning that the post-2022 totals may also reflect offenses that were reported but would be recorded and published differently and not appear in this annual total count. Identifying the effect of each of these changes gives us the most accurate measure of how sexual violence, including rape, has increased or decreased in each location.
\",\"name\":\"5ac54bbc-2588-4814-84f2-4844d0904f82\"},{\"type\":\"PARAGRAPH\",\"value\":\"The changes in the legal and social conversations surrounding consent and sexual assault increased reporting practices across Spain. Available data from different regions helps to pull apart the changes in annual counts and see that there is regional variation.
\",\"name\":\"f2265a6f-3050-4719-95b3-f2abcaad26c3\"},{\"type\":\"WIDGET\",\"value\":{\"media\":\"/media/screenshot-2026-08-24-060228.png\",\"alt_text\":\" Reported Rapes by Region\",\"caption\":\"\"},\"name\":\"migration_media\"},{\"type\":\"PARAGRAPH\",\"value\":\"Regionally, we see that most areas of Spain experienced a minor increase in reported sexual assault since the late 2010s and that the Este (eastern) region — which includes the cities Valencia, Alicante, Murcia, Cartagena, and Castellon — has shown a much starker increase, while also featuring more annual offenses. PCI observes that in Valencia, for instance, reported sexual assault has increased by more than 50% in the last five years.
\",\"name\":\"49bd682c-f5f4-4e4d-9d11-f92c95ac07cf\"},{\"type\":\"PARAGRAPH\",\"value\":\"Scholarly work in the paper Victimization, Social Structure and Psychosocial Variables: The Case of Spain in 1999 and 2016 highlighted that in Spain, in the late 90s and mid-2010s, the reporting rate of sexual offenses was estimated at 40-50%, meaning that half or more of offenses went unreported to police. A 2024 survey conducted by Spain’s Ministry of Equality found that 7.7% of women over the age of 16 have experienced violence within a relationship and that 14.5% have experienced it outside of a relationship. The same survey found that 26.3% of victims of physical or sexual violence within a relationship have reported it, while only 4.9% of victims of sexual violence outside of a relationship reported it to authorities. And, only 8% of sexual assaults committed outside of a relationship are reported.
\",\"name\":\"71ec9a5e-27b1-4f75-a936-fd03dcb510c6\"},{\"type\":\"PARAGRAPH\",\"value\":\"Like most dramatic short-term changes in crime numbers, the changes in Spain are not without controversy, both in pushback against the law in the Spanish political sphere, debate to what degree violent sexual assaults have truly increased in the last decade, and the root causes of these social problems.
\",\"name\":\"0d28d829-3a3e-4b0c-8f8b-1503b9acbd22\"},{\"type\":\"PARAGRAPH\",\"value\":\"Data scientists constructing PCI Spain produced different underreporting scalars for sexual assault and rape in Spain. One scalar exists to interpolate crime risk stemming from data before 2022, and another for 2023 and after. We used data on calls to the 016 hotline by region to capture the sequential rollout of the program and identify geography-specific timing of the underreporting shift. These changes help Pinkerton develop a stronger, more accurate understanding of violent crime risk in Spain.
\",\"name\":\"ccf3117c-c247-489a-8ce1-8e0b1007ae9d\"},{\"type\":\"PARAGRAPH\",\"value\":\"This instance of sexual assault laws in Spain highlights an important distinction in assessing risk. Changes in definitions and reporting behavior can cause movement in crime numbers, particularly in official reportage or in crime risk assessments based solely on official numbers, without reflecting changes in actual offending rates or real risk.
\",\"name\":\"6700c045-68a1-4b75-a833-fea6b012226f\"},{\"type\":\"WIDGET\",\"value\":{\"content\":\"SOURCES
Beatley, M. (2019, April 23). The shocking rape trial that galvanised Spain's feminists – and the far right. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/23/wolf-pack-case-spain-feminism-far-right-vox
Burgen, S. (2022, August 25). Spain passes 'only yes means yes' sexual consent law. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/25/spain-only-yes-means-yes-sexual-consent-bill-expected-to-become-law
Herranz de Rafael, G., & Fernández-Prados, J. S. (2019). Victimization, Social Structure and Psychosocial Variables: The Case of Spain in 1999 and 2016. Social Sciences, 8(3), 102. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8030102
Verificat. (2024, July 24). Por qué más denuncias por violencia machista no implica más casos [Why more complaints of sexist violence do not imply more cases]. https://www.verificat.cat/es/por-que-mas-denuncias-por-violencia-machista-no-implica-mas-casos/
Verificat. (2025, December 16). Por qué los datos sobre agresiones sexuales parecen crecer tanto (y qué explican realmente) [Why data on sexual assaults seem to grow so much (and what they really explain)]. https://www.verificat.cat/es/datos-agresiones-sexuales-altos-que-explican/
Delegación del Gobierno contra la Violencia de Género. (2025, December 3). Macroencuesta de Violencia contra la Mujer 2024 [Macro-survey on violence against women 2024]. Ministerio de Igualdad. https://violenciagenero.igualdad.gob.es/violenciaencifras/macroencuesta-de-violencia-contra-la-mujer-2024/